Wabacog covers a shaved place in a primeval forest which slopes to a
lake of the same name. Covering this bare spot are huge piles of sawed
lumber--Monteith's axe-razors did the shaving--surrounding an enormous
mill surmounted by a smokestack of wrought iron topped with a bird-cage
spark arrester, the whole flanked by a runway emerging from the lake,
up which climb in mournful procession the stately bodies of fallen
monarchs awaiting the cutting irony of the saw. Farther along, on
another clearing, stands a square building labelled "Office," and still
farther on, guarded by sentinel trees and encircled by wide piazzas,
sprawls a low-roofed bungalow, its main entrance level with a boardwalk
ending in the lake. This was Monteith's home. Here during the winter's
logging he housed himself in complete seclusion, and here in summer he
kept open house for whoever would answer in person his welcoming
letters.
Anything so rude and primeval, or so comforting and inviting, was
beyond the experience of Muggles and his friends. This became apparent
before they had shed their coats and unpacked their bags. There was a
darky who answered to the name of Jackson who could not only crisp
trout to a turn, but who could compound cocktails, rub down muscular
backs shivering from morning plunges in the lake, make beds, clean
guns, wait on the table, and in an emergency row a canoe. There were
easy chairs and low-pitched divans overspread with Turkey rugs and
heaped with piles of silk cushions; there were wooden lockers, all
open, and each one filled with drinkables and smokables--drinkables
with white labels, and smokables six inches long with cuffs halfway
down their length; there was an ice-chest sampling a larger house in
the rear; there was a big, wide, all-embracing fireplace that burst its
sides laughing over the good time it was having (the air was cool at
night), and outside, redolent with perfume and glistening in the
sunshine, there was a bed of mint protected by a curbing of plank which
rivalled in its sweet freshness those covering the last resting-places
of the most hospitable of Virginians.
And there was Monteith!
Some men are born rich; some inherit a pair of scissors fitted to
strong thumbs and forefingers, some have to lie awake nights wondering
what they will do next to help their surplus run to waste, and some
pass sleepless hours devising plans by which they can catch in their
empty pockets the clippings and drippings of all three. Muggles's host
was none of these. What he possessed he had worked for--early, late and
all the time. His father had stood by and seen the old homestead in his
native Southern State topple into ashes, Only the gaunt chimney left;
the son had worked his way through college, and then with diploma in
one hand and his courage in the other--all he owned--had shaken the
dust of civilization from his shoes and had struck out for the Northern
wilds: Wabacog was the result.
All these years he had kept in touch with his college chums, and when
the day of his success arrived, and he was his own master, with the
inborn good-fellowship that marked his race, he had unbuttoned his
pocket, shaken out his heart and let loose a hospitality that not only
revived the memories of his childhood, but created a new kind of joy in
the hearts of his guests. Hence the bungalow--hence Jackson--hence the
lockers and the ice-chest, and hence the bed quilt of mint.
"This is your room, Muggles--and, Bender, old man, yours is next
Podvine, you are across the hall," was his welcome. "Breakfast is any
time you want it; dinner at six. Now come here! See that line of
lockers and that ice-chest? Don't forget 'em, please! Step up,
Jackson--take a look at him, boys. That darky can mix anything known to
man. He never sleeps, and he's never tired. If you don't call on him
for every blessed thing you want day or night, there'll be trouble."
They fished and canoed; they hunted bears--a fact known to the bear,
who kept out of their way--never was in it, Bender insisted; they went
overboard every morning, one after another, in the almost ice-cold
water of the lake, out again red as lobsters, back on a run, whooping
with the cold to the blazing fire of the bungalow which Jackson had
replenished with bundles of dried balsam that cracked and snapped with
a roar while it toasted the bare backs and scorched the bare legs of
each one in turn (the balsam was gathered the year before for this very
purpose). They roamed the woods, getting a crack once in a while at a
partridge or a squirrel; they strolled about the mill, listening to the
whir of the saws and watching the "cut" as it was rolled away and was
made to feed the huge piles of lumber and timber flanking the runway
and far enough away from the huge stack to be out of the way of
treacherous sparks; and at night they sat around Jackson's constantly
replenished fire and told stories of their college days or revived the
current gossip of the club and the Street.
Muggles ruminated over each and every experience--all new to him--and
kept his eyes open for the psychological moment when he would burst
asunder the bonds of conventionality and rise to the full measure of
his abilities. The Clanworthys had swung battle-axes and ridden
milk-white chargers into the thickest of the fray. His turn would come;
he felt it in his knee: then these unbelievers would be silenced.
His host interested him enormously, especially his masterful way of
handling his men. He himself had been elected foreman of Hose Carriage
No. 1 in the village near his father's country seat, and still held
that important office. His cape and fire-boots fitted him to a nicety,
and so did his helmet. No. 1 had been called out but once in its
history, and then to the relief of a barn which, having lost heart
before the rescuers reached it, had sunk to the ground in despair and
there covered itself with ashes. He had been criticised, he remembered,
much to his chagrin, for the way he had conducted the rescue party; but
it would never happen again. After this he would pattern his conduct
after Monteith, who seemed to accomplish by a nod and a wave of the
hand what he had split his throat in trying to enforce. He did not put
these thoughts into words; neither did he whisper them even in the ears
of Podvine or Monteith--the two men who understood him best and who
guyed him the least--especially Monteith, who never forgot that his
college chum was his guest. He confided them instead to Monteith's big,
red-faced foreman--half Canadian, part French, and the rest of him
Irish--who was another source of wonder. Muggles's inherent good humor
and willingness to oblige had made an impression on the lumber-boss and
he was always willing to answer any fool question the young New Yorker
asked--a privilege which he never extended to his comrades.
"What do I do when somepin' catches fire?" the boss replied to one of
Muggles's inquiries--they were sitting in the office alone, Bender and
little Billy having gone fishing with Jackson. "I'd blow that big
whistle ye see hooked to the safety, first. Ye never heard it?--well,
don't! It'll scare the life out o' ye. If the mill catches before we
can get the pumps to work it's all up with us. If the piles of lumber
git afire we kin save some of 'em if the wind's right; that's why we
stack up the sawed stuff in separate piles."
"What do you do first--squirt water on it?"
"No, we ain't got no squirts that'll reach. Best way to handle the
piles o' lumber is to start a line of bucket-men from the lake and
cover the piles with anything you can catch up--blankets, old carpets,
quilts; keep 'em soaked and ye kin fight it for a while; that's when
one pile's afire, and ye're tryin' to save the pile next t'it. Light
stuff is all over in half an hour--no matter how big the pile is--keep
the rags soaked--that's my way."
That night before the blazing coals Muggles broke out on some theories
of putting out a conflagration that made Bender sit up straight and
little Billy Salters cup his ears in attention. Monteith also craned
his neck to listen.
"Who the devil taught you that, Mixey?" asked Bender. "You talk as if
you were Chief of the Big Six."
"Why, any fireman knows that. I've been running with a machine for
years." The calm way with which Muggles said this, shaking the ashes
from his cigar as he spoke, showed a certain self-reliance. "Out in our
village I'm foreman of the Hose Company."
The sudden roar that followed this announcement shook the big glasses
and bottles on the low table.
"So you'd keep the blankets soaked, would you?" remarked Billy, winking
at the others.
"I certainly would." This came with a certain triumphant tone in his
voice.
"Learned that practising on his head," whispered Podvine.
"Right you are, Poddy; but Muggles, suppose the mill caught first,"
chipped in Monteith. The mill was the apple of his eye. Fire was what
he dreaded--he never could insure the mill fully against fire. "What
would you protect first--the mill or the piles of lumber?"
"The lumber, of course--the mill can use its pumps if the engine-room
escapes."
"Better save the mill," rejoined Monteith thoughtfully. "Trade is
pretty dull." Then he rose from his seat, reached for his hat and
strolled out on the portico to take a look around before he turned in.
Muggles's masterful grasp of a science of which his companions knew as
little as they did of the Patagonian dialects came as a distinct
surprise. What else had the beggar been picking up in the way of
knowledge? Maybe Muggles wasn't such a goat, after all. That Monteith
had approved of his tactics only increased their respect for their
companion. Muggles caught the meaning of the look in their faces and
his waistcoat began to pinch him across his chest. This life was what
he needed, he said to himself. Here were big men--the lumber-boss was
one--and he was another--doing big things. Nothing like getting down to
primeval Nature for an inspiration! "Hugging the sod," as he named it,
had had its effect not only on himself, but on his fellows. They would
never have felt that way toward him at the Magnolia. The week at
Wabacog had widened their horizon--widened everybody's horizon--as for
himself he felt like a Western prairie with limitless possibilities
ending in mountains of accomplishment.
That night, an hour after midnight, Muggles found himself sitting bolt
upright in bed. Outside, filling the air of the wilderness, bellowed
and roared the deep tones of the steam siren. Then came a babel of
voices gaining in distinctness and volume:
"Fire, FIRE, FIRE!"
Muggles sprang through the door and ran full tilt into Jackson and
Bender, who had vaulted from their beds but a second before. The next
instant every man in the bungalow, Monteith at their head, came
tumbling out, one after the other.
"Fire! Fire! Fire!" rang the cry, repeated by a hundred mill hands
rushing toward the mill. A spark had worked its way through the
arrester, some one said, had fallen into the sawed stuff, been nursed
into a blaze by the night wind, and a roaring flame was in full charge
of one pile of lumber and likely to take possession of another.
Muggles looked about him.